The Fruit of the Tree Is a Story that None Must Tell (Excerpt)

Your people have a saying: History is written by the victors. Thus, because you are alive the tell the tale, because your children are alive to hear it, you consider yourselves to have won.

And that is good. That is proper. That is the conclusion my people left you to reach when they abandoned you on the battlefield. It is a necessary condition to their victory that the losers write the story of the war.

I will say this only once: Cover your ears. Refuse to listen. I am their enemy, but I am not your friend.

Let no one say I did not give you a choice.

The truth is, of course, that you were the losers of this war. And it was a slow war, a war in secret, a subtle war waged behind the scenes for untold millennia during which you did not even fight back. The rise of agriculture, the birth of industry, the aggregation of knowledge culminating in pinpoint explosions of genius, the triumphs and bloodshed of nations and states--all proceeding according to my people's plan. We let slip strategic pieces of information. We pushed events along. And we did it from much closer than you might think. Since the first of you began to walk upright, we shadowed your every footsteps. We watched you and we manipulated you from a place that was not a place, just off to the side (that was not a physical "side") of your existence.

But you became aware--that was our first victory....